Babylon Health says its AI can appropriately triage 85% of patients

AI healthcare startup Babylon Health believes it can appropriately triage patients in 85 percent of cases.

Babylon Health is best known for GP at Hand, a service which is supported by UK health secretary Matt Hancock and integrated into Samsung Health.

GP at Hand links patients with health experts 24/7 using video calls and can facilitate any prescriptions to be sent to local pharmacies. The service, however, has been criticised for an AI chatbot which repeatedly gave...

1 April 2020 | Healthcare

AI project aims to diagnose COVID-19 using voice analysis

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Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University are developing an AI-powered voice analysis system for diagnosing COVID-19.

Governments around the world are racing to obtain sufficient and effective testing kits to diagnose COVID-19. The current widely-used test requires a thin cotton swab to be put up the nasal cavity and reach to the back of the throat. It’s not a painful procedure, but it’s invasive and uncomfortable.

COVID-19 tests which only require a finger prick...

1 April 2020 | Healthcare

Babylon Health lashes out at doctor who raised AI chatbot safety concerns

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Controversial healthcare app maker Babylon Health has criticised the doctor who first raised concerns about the safety of their AI chatbot.

Babylon Health’s chatbot is available in the company’s GP at Hand app, a digital healthcare solution championed by health secretary Matt Hancock that was also integrated into Samsung Health since last year.

The chatbot aims to reduce the burden on GPs and A&E departments by automating the triage process to determine whether...

26 February 2020 | Bots

MIT researchers use AI to discover a welcome new antibiotic

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A team of MIT researchers have used AI to discover a welcome new antibiotic to help in the fight against increasing resistance.

Using a machine learning algorithm, the MIT researchers were able to discover a new antibiotic compound which did not develop any resistance during a 30-day treatment period on mice.

The algorithm was trained using around 2,500 molecules – including about 1,700 FDA-approved drugs and a set of 800 natural products – to seek out chemical...

21 February 2020 | Healthcare

Microsoft details $40 million ‘AI for Health’ initiative

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Microsoft is reminding us big corporations can sometimes do good in the world with a $40 million AI healthcare initiative.

In a blog post today, Microsoft chief data analytics officer John Kahan detailed the new initiative which aims to advance the health of people and communities around the world.

Kahan notes how, on the whole, people have never been healthier or safer. He particularly highlights the steep decline in child and maternal mortality...

30 January 2020 | Healthcare

Macquarie Uni researchers aim to beat tech giants at AI-powered medical scribing

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A team of researchers from Macquarie University are developing an AI-powered scribe as concerns grow about tech giants having too much power in healthcare.

Many of us know how voice services often struggle with even "normal" conversations, despite vast training datasets available. National and regional accents are difficult enough without adding in industry-specific jargon.

However, correctly understanding medical terms could mean life or death. With healthcare set to be...

9 December 2019 | Healthcare

GE Healthcare’s new initiative aims to boost AI adoption by health providers

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GE Healthcare launched its Edison Developer Program on Tuesday, an initiative aimed at boosting the adoption of AI by health providers.

Edison is an AI platform launched last year to help with leveraging data from imaging devices.

Kieran Murphy, President and CEO at GE Healthcare, says:

“We introduced Edison just one year ago at RSNA to help health providers take advantage of data in new and significant ways.

With the introduction of the Edison...

27 November 2019 | Adoption

Project Nightingale: Google denies using private health data for its AI research

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Google has denied using private health data for its own AI research following The Wall Street Journal’s exposé of Project Nightingale.

Project Nightingale is Google’s codename for its partnership with Ascension, the US’ second-largest health system. The project enables Google to access the health information of around 50 million American patients.

Ascension reportedly did not tell doctors and patients that it was sharing data – including the names, histories,...

13 November 2019 | Ethics

AI project greenlit after reducing A&E attendances by a third

An AI project which successfully cut A&E attendances by a third has been greenlit for a wider rollout.

Over 1,000 patients were involved in a trial of an AI system developed by Health Navigator at York Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust over the last four years.

AI was used to identify patients at risk of unplanned hospital admissions. By highlighting these patients, nurses were deployed to help coach them over six months on how to improve their health and reduce...

28 October 2019 | Healthcare

Pinterest uses AI to reduce self-harm content by 88% over the past year

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Pinterest announced on World Mental Health Day that it’s reduced self-harm content by 88 percent over the past year using AI.

In a blog post titled Getting better at helping people feel better, the social media platform says it’s using machine learning techniques to identify content which displays, encourages, or rationalises self-harm.

Anxiety and depression are at all-time highs while many countries are failing to properly fund mental health services. In the UK,...

11 October 2019 | Healthcare